Digital video systems allow TV content to be provided to mobile devices such as mobile phones, palm devices, etc as well as wireline devices using IP protocols. An issue with providing live TV feeds is that carriers seek high availability for their systems.
A solution to providing high availability is to use a central entity that monitors the health of the active modules (“primaries”) in the system. The central entity may query the active modules or the modules may send a heartbeat signal. When a failure occurs, the central entity activates a spare to replace a failed module. However, if the central entity fails, the entire system is vulnerable to failures. In addition, queries or the heartbeat signals may get lost and the failure may go undetected. This solution can also have unmanageable complexity and cost because it must scale to support hundreds of channels.
An alternative solution is to use a device that monitors the output of the primaries. Upon detecting a failure, it activates a spare. Monitoring the output of a module works well when the output can be easily verified. However, corrupted output may appear valid unless it is completely decoded. In addition, monitoring a large number of outputs may not be practical and adds cost and complexity to the system.
What is required is a system, method and computer readable medium for providing high availability in a digital video system.